The Thief's Bargain

The fog crept along the cobblestones, curling around the ankles of those few souls still wandering the streets at this late hour. Felix Carr pulled his collar up against the chill and pressed deeper into the shadows of the alleyway. His eyes never left the weathered façade across the street—The Oddities Shop, with its peeling paint and crooked sign that squeaked softly in the night breeze.

The shop was an anomaly in this gentrified district, a relic from another time that somehow persisted despite the trendy boutiques and overpriced cafés that had encroached upon it from all sides. But unlike those establishments with their gleaming security systems and reinforced glass, The Oddities Shop stood unguarded. No cameras. No alarm. No iron bars on the windows.

Just a single lock on a wooden door, and a shopkeeper who left precisely at midnight.

Felix checked his watch. 11:58 PM. Right on schedule, the lights inside dimmed, and moments later, a figure emerged from the shop. The man was wrapped in a long coat that seemed to absorb what little streetlight touched it. Something about his gait made Felix's skin prickle—too smooth, too purposeful, as if the man were gliding rather than walking. The shopkeeper paused, his head tilting slightly in Felix's direction, and for a heart-stopping moment, Felix thought he'd been spotted.

But then the man continued on his way, disappearing into the mist like a phantom returning to the grave.

Felix waited five minutes more, counting the seconds, listening to the muffled sounds of the city—distant car horns, the bass thrum of music from a club three blocks over, the whispers of passersby. When he was certain no one was watching, he crossed the street with practiced nonchalance, lockpicks already warming in his palm.

The rumors about this place had spread through his underworld contacts like wildfire. Priceless artifacts. Ancient relics. Items that collectors would pay fortunes to possess, no questions asked. All protected by nothing more than ancient superstition and an odd shopkeeper who seemed to spook even the most hardened criminals.

But Felix Carr wasn't superstitious, and he certainly wasn't afraid of some eccentric old man. He had built his reputation on taking what others couldn't—or wouldn't—and leaving no trace behind.

The lock surrendered to his skilled fingers in less than thirty seconds. A personal best. He allowed himself a small smile as he eased the door open, wincing at the soft chime that announced his entrance.

For a moment, he stood frozen in the threshold, waiting for an alarm, for lights, for any sign that his presence had been detected. But there was only silence, thick and expectant, like the held breath of a predator.

Felix stepped inside, closing the door behind him with exquisite care. The air was heavy with the scent of old books, polished wood, and something else—something sharp and metallic that reminded him of blood. His flashlight cut through the darkness, revealing a cluttered space filled with objects that defied easy categorization.

Glass cabinets held items that caught the beam of his light and reflected it back in ways that made his eyes water. Shelves sagged under the weight of tomes bound in materials that didn't look like leather or cloth. Dolls with too-knowing eyes perched on high shelves, and Felix could have sworn one turned its head as he passed.

But it was just the shadows playing tricks. Just his imagination, heightened by the strange atmosphere of the place.

Still, something about the shop made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It felt... aware. As if the walls themselves were watching him, as if the floorboards were memorizing the pattern of his footsteps. He shook off the sensation. This wasn't the time for jitters.

His flashlight beam landed on a glass counter at the far end of the shop. There, nestled atop a velvet cushion, was a golden locket, its surface etched with intricate designs that seemed to move in the wavering light. Felix approached carefully, stepping around displays of oddities that he couldn't even name.

The locket called to him. He couldn't say why, but something about it whispered of wealth beyond measure. His fingers stretched toward it, hovering just above its gleaming surface.

"It does not belong to you."

The voice sliced through the silence like a blade, soft yet perfectly clear. Felix whirled around, his free hand automatically reaching for the knife concealed at his waist.

There, as if he had materialized from the shadows themselves, stood a man behind the counter. Felix's heart slammed against his ribs as he aimed his flashlight at the figure.

The beam illuminated a slender man with silver-streaked black hair that fell just past his shoulders. His face was angular, timeless in a way that made it impossible to guess his age—he could have been forty or a well-preserved sixty. But it was his eyes that held Felix transfixed. They were the color of amber in one moment, shifting to a deep, midnight blue in the next, as if unable to decide on a single hue.

He wore a waistcoat of burgundy brocade over a crisp white shirt, the collar open at the throat to reveal a silver pendant that seemed to hold no reflection, even in the direct beam of Felix's light.

"Mr. Nox, I presume," Felix said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. He'd heard the name whispered in back rooms and abandoned warehouses—the proprietor of The Oddities Shop, a man who dealt in treasures that some claimed were too dangerous to own.

The man's mouth curved into a smile that never touched his eyes. "You've heard of me. How flattering." His accent was indiscernible, hinting at origins both foreign and familiar. "And you would be Felix Carr. The ghost thief. The man who leaves no trace."

A cold shock ran through Felix's body. He hadn't used his real name in years, operating under a dozen aliases across three continents. "How do you—"

"Know who you are?" Mr. Nox finished, his head tilting slightly as if examining a curious specimen. "This shop knows all who enter it. As do I." He gestured at the knife Felix had half-drawn. "There's no need for that. I assure you, I am unarmed and have no intention of stopping you."

Felix didn't sheathe his blade, but he did pull it fully free, the metal gleaming dully in the low light. "Then you won't mind if I help myself to some of your inventory."

Mr. Nox spread his hands in a gesture of acquiescence. "Take whatever you like," he said, his tone almost amused. "But every treasure comes with a price."

"Everything has a price," Felix countered. "But only fools pay it."

Something flickered in Mr. Nox's changeable eyes—a shadow of something ancient and cold—but it was gone so quickly that Felix thought he might have imagined it. "Indeed," the shopkeeper murmured. "A philosophy that has served you well, I imagine."

Felix didn't like the way Nox was looking at him, as if he could see through flesh and bone to the very core of him. He turned away, scanning the shop for the most valuable item he could find. His flashlight settled on a display case near the wall, and within it, resting on a cushion of crimson velvet, was a dagger unlike any he had ever seen.

Its blade was obsidian, so dark it seemed to pull light into itself, and along its length ran intricate carvings that shifted before his eyes, forming patterns that made his vision blur when he tried to focus on them. The hilt was wrapped in a material that might have been leather but felt wrong somehow, and set into the pommel was a stone that glowed with an inner fire despite the darkness surrounding it.

"Ah," Mr. Nox said softly, and something in his voice made Felix glance back at him. The shopkeeper was watching him with an expression that might have been pity. "A bold choice."

Felix approached the case, half-expecting Nox to try to stop him, but the man remained where he was, utterly still in a way that no living thing should be. Felix lifted the glass covering with trembling fingers—not from fear, he told himself, but from anticipation.

The dagger seemed to pulse as his hand hovered above it, as if it had a heartbeat of its own. He hesitated, just for a moment, as a voice in the back of his mind screamed warnings he couldn't quite understand.

"Second thoughts, Mr. Carr?" Mr. Nox's voice drifted to him, gentle as a funeral hymn. "There are safer treasures to be had. That music box, for instance—" he nodded toward a delicate silver object on a nearby shelf, "—would fetch a handsome price from the right collector."

But Felix had made his choice. The dagger would be his prize tonight. He seized it by the hilt, and the moment his fingers closed around it, a chill spread through his arm, ice-cold and burning at once. His veins darkened visibly beneath his skin, turning black as pitch before fading back to normal.

He gasped, almost dropping the dagger, but found that his fingers wouldn't uncurl from the hilt. It was as if the weapon had fused to his grip.

"What the hell—" he began, but Mr. Nox cut him off with a soft chuckle.

"The obsidian blade of Ixquar," the shopkeeper said, as casually as if discussing the weather. "Carved from the heart of a fallen star and bathed in the blood of a thousand sacrifices. It hungers still, after all these centuries." His eyes, now the color of fresh bruises, found Felix's. "It has chosen you. How interesting."

Felix didn't wait to hear more. Panic surged through him, and with it, the desperate need to flee. He tucked the dagger inside his coat—an act that required more effort than it should have, as if the blade were reluctant to be hidden—and bolted for the door.

As he yanked it open, the bell chiming discordantly above him, he heard Mr. Nox call after him in a voice that seemed to echo from everywhere at once:

"We'll see each other again, Mr. Carr. The shop always reclaims what belongs to it."

The fog had thickened outside, coiling around him like spectral fingers as he ran. The streets were deserted now, the few late-night revelers having found their way home or to warmer, more welcoming establishments. Felix's footsteps echoed hollowly off the buildings, the sound somehow wrong, as if they were a half-beat behind his actual movements.

He ducked down an alley, taking the labyrinthine route back to his safe house from muscle memory alone. But as he moved through the empty streets, a sensation crawled over him—like unseen eyes tracking his every step.

He kept seeing shadows move at the edge of his vision. Figures lurking in doorways that disappeared when he turned his head. Once, he could have sworn he saw Mr. Nox reflected in a puddle, looking up at him from beneath the water's surface, but when he looked again, there was only his own distorted face staring back.

His reflection in shop windows started to lag behind him, moving just a fraction slower, as if something else was wearing his face and couldn't quite get the timing right. And all the while, the dagger pulsed against his side, its rhythm matching the frantic beating of his heart.

By the time he reached his hideout—a run-down apartment in a building scheduled for demolition, paid for in cash under a false name—Felix was drenched in cold sweat. He fumbled with his keys, dropping them twice before managing to unlock the door with shaking hands.

Inside, he slammed the door shut and engaged all three locks, then collapsed against it, breathing hard. The apartment was dark save for the glow of a streetlamp filtering through thin curtains. It cast long shadows across the cluttered space—a mattress on the floor, a table covered in the tools of his trade, shelves lined with small treasures he hadn't yet sold.

Felix reached for the light switch, but before his fingers found it, he froze. There, in the dim light, he could see his reflection in the full-length mirror that leaned against the far wall. Except... it wasn't mirroring his movements. While he stood with his back pressed against the door, his reflection stood straight, arms at its sides, watching him with eyes that seemed to hold no light.

"Not real," Felix whispered, his voice cracking. "Not real, not real, not—"

His reflection smiled at him, a terrible, stretching grin that split its face in a way no human mouth should move.

Felix fumbled for the dagger, thinking wildly that he could use it to defend himself, but the moment his fingers closed around the hilt, the room shifted around him. The walls stretched, elongating impossibly. The ceiling receded until it was lost in darkness. The door behind him seemed miles away, though he could still feel its solid presence at his back.

And the mirror—the mirror grew, its surface rippling like disturbed water. His reflection stepped forward, one foot emerging from the glass, then another, until it stood fully in the room with him.

It was him, but not him—its eyes were hollow, black voids that swallowed light. Its skin was too pale, as if it had never known the touch of sun. And in its hand was the obsidian dagger—except it was clean, free, not fused to its grip as it was to Felix's.

"Who—what are you?" Felix stammered, trying to back away but finding nowhere to go.

The doppelgänger tilted its head, an eerily perfect mimicry of Mr. Nox's earlier gesture. When it spoke, its voice was Felix's, but layered with something else, something that echoed as if from a great distance.

"I am the price," it said. "The cost of taking what isn't yours to claim."

It stepped forward. Felix tried to run, to fight, but his limbs wouldn't obey. It was as if the dagger in his hand had become so heavy that it anchored him to the spot.

The doppelgänger reached out, its cold fingers tracing Felix's jawline in a grotesque parody of tenderness. "He warned you," it whispered. "Every treasure comes with a price."

The last thing Felix saw was his own stolen face plunging the dagger into his chest. There was pain, brief but intense, and then a curious emptiness, as if he were being poured out of himself, his essence draining away to be replaced by... nothing.

The morning sun cast long fingers of light through the windows of The Oddities Shop, illuminating dust motes that danced in the air like miniature galaxies. Mr. Nox moved among the displays, adjusting an antique music box here, polishing a crystal decanter there. The shop was silent save for the soft ticking of a hundred clocks, none of which told the same time.

The bell above the door chimed softly as it opened, admitting a figure into the shop. Mr. Nox didn't look up immediately, but a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

"Right on time," he murmured.

The figure that stepped inside wore Felix Carr's face—but its eyes were vacant, its movements eerily smooth, as if it were a marionette controlled by an unseen hand. It walked to the counter and placed the obsidian dagger back where it had been the night before, nestled on its crimson cushion.

Mr. Nox finally looked up, his eyes now the color of forest shadows at dusk. He studied the empty shell that had once been Felix Carr, noting the way it stood perfectly still, not even pretending to breathe.

"I trust the debt has been paid," he said softly.

The figure said nothing—just turned and left, fading into the bright morning street like a shadow retreating from the light.

Mr. Nox approached the dagger, tracing a finger along its blade. The carvings shifted beneath his touch, forming new patterns, incorporating a new name into their complex design. Felix Carr was there now, etched in obsidian, joining the hundreds—thousands—who had come before him.

"Such a waste," Mr. Nox said to the empty shop. But there was no real regret in his voice, only a distant sort of acknowledgment, as if Felix's fate had been inevitable from the moment he'd set eyes on The Oddities Shop.

The bell chimed again, signaling a new arrival. Mr. Nox looked up, his eyes shifting to a warm honey-gold that invited trust, confidence, secrets shared in whispered tones. His smile was gentle, welcoming.

"Good morning," he greeted the wide-eyed young woman who stepped hesitantly into his domain. "Welcome to The Oddities Shop. How may I help you today?"

The shop was never empty for long. There were always those drawn to treasures they did not understand, willing to pay prices they could not comprehend.

And Mr. Nox, eternal as the hungers he served, would always be there to make the exchange.